Salvatore Cazzetta

Salvatore "Sal" Cazzetta (born c. 1954), also known as "La Barbe" ("the Beard"), is a Canadian former outlaw biker and gangster who founded the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club and later joined the Hells Angels following the Quebec Biker War.

He was also a longtime associate of the Rizzuto crime family of Montreal.

Cazzetta was born in Montreal and grew up in the Saint-Henri neighborhood in the south of the city, a crime-ridden area which was a territory of the Dubois brothers gang.

Cazzetta became involved in low-level crime as a young man, and his first arrest was in 1975 when he stole a Ford Mustang and scrapped it for parts.

In 1976, he became a founding member and leader of the SS Motorcycle Club.

In 1977, Salvatore and his brother Giovanni were charged with robbery and breaking and entering.

They had broken into a local bar and attempted to steal money from the cigarette machines, finding only $300.

Police arrived, and while hiding in the basement, Cazzetta attempted to attack an officer.

For this, he received a two-year prison sentence.

By 1980, he was released and his love for the biker lifestyle increased.

Shortly after his release, Cazzetta was caught attempting to steal a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

He got a tattoo on his arm that depicted a Harley Davidson motorcycle with the word "Brothers" inscribed.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, the club began to use their contacts in the West End Gang to purchase large and import amounts of narcotics though the Port of Montreal.

Cazzetta has often been described as controlling all of the organized crime in Montreal that was not controlled by the Mafia in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Times were profitable for the Rock Machine, enough so that Cazzetta purchased a mansion worth $2 million in L'Épiphanie.

By 1981, Cazzetta was returned to prison for minor offences and he had been involved in a series of break-ins and robberies of local businesses, including the theft of 26 leather jackets from a clothing store (presumably to be turned into biker vests).

While incarcerated at the Bordeaux Detention Center, he participated in the murder of fellow inmate Wayne Story.

Five men, including Cazzetta, stormed into Story's cell and beat him to death with metal rods.

The police believe that this was a gang-related incident.

The evidence against Cazzetta and the other convicts was so weak, however, that the case was dismissed.

By 1982, Cazzetta was released from prison and began to sell narcotics.

Shortly afterwards, he served a two-month term for possession of 56 grams of PCP.

Boucher, who joined the SS in 1982, became friends with Cazzetta, and as leaders of the club, the pair became candidates to join the Hells Angels when that club expanded into Canada.

By 1984, the SS biker club's membership had increased and its ranks included several high-profile figures in the Canadian biker scene, including the Cazzetta brothers, Paul "Sasquatch" Porter, Maurice "Mom" Boucher, Normand "Biff" Hamel, Gillies Lambert, Louis "Mélou" Roy, Normand Robitaille, Salvatore Brunetti, René "Balloune" Charlebois, André Chouinard, Denis "Pas Fiable" Houle, Gilles "Trooper" Mathieu, Michel Rose, Richard "Dick" Mayrand, and Frédéric "Fred" Faucher.

The SS was dispended in 1984, and the Cazzetta brothers and Porter, along with others, chose not to join the Hells Angels.

Elements of the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter had become convinced that five senior members of their club had been embezzling club profits, and so they lured them to a meeting and killed them in an event known as the Lennoxville massacre of 1985.

According to true crime author RJ Parker, this mass killing triggered distrust within other elements of Canada's underworld.

According to Parker, the Cazzetta brothers were closely related to senior member of the Rizzuto crime family, and thus adopted the position that underworld members should not kill other members of their own gang.

The Rock Machine, which had been founded in response to the Lennoxville purge, established it's "mother chapter" in the city of Montreal.

Instead, they founded the Rock Machine in 1986.

When Boucher was released from prison the same year, he was offered membership in the Rock Machine by the Cazzetta brothers, but he declined the offer in favor of joining the Hells Angels.

The Cazzetta brothers recruited heavily, and by the early 1990s, the Rock Machine had over 100 members or "prospect" members between its Montreal and Quebec City chapters.

The brothers also formed alliances with the Rizzuto family, the West End Gang, and the Dubois gang.

In January 1993, West End Gang associates William "Billy" McAllister and Paul Larue were in talks with Cazzetta to put together another large deal for the two groups and had been speaking with a contact named John Burns in Florida, who had agreed to supply a large amount of cocaine.

The pair did not have enough money so they were reliant on the Rock Machine and other aligned motorcycle clubs to provide most of the $875,000 (modern equivalent of $1,847,546) in U.S. currency needed for the initial purchase.

On 10 March 1993, the exchange was officially set.

On 19 March 1993, Cazzetta and fellow high-ranking Rock Machine member Nelson Fernandez traveled to Florida.

With them, they brought the Rock Machine's contribution to the deal, which amounted to $660,000 (modern equivalent of $1,393,577).

The two exchanged the money with Burns at a hotel.

The plan was for them to take the initial portion of the shipment to two others who would be in charge of smuggling the drugs across the Canadian border.